Here’s an admirable artistic philosophy, Whether you play the clarinet or roll around in colors and use your naked body as an urban paintbrush: “I just hope the world comes to me as opposed to the other way around, because I’m gonna just keep on doing what I do.”
Ashley Paul said that verbatim in an interview that we did with her back in 2013; at the time, the Brooklynite was embracing the novel experience of recently having toured in Europe for the first time. Her music up until that point had been consciously personal take on singer-songwriting. But having since moved to London — and with the announcement of a new album called Lost In Shadows — we as listeners can anticipate the chance to mercilessly rule on whether or not the former homebody has gradually succumbed to the whims of grander, old-world cosmopolitanism.
Well: yes and no. According to Paul, Lost In Shadows is an intensely personal reflection of her recently assumed motherhood role; a “cathartic outpouring,” influenced, she says, by “hours spent awake at night in a dreamlike state of half consciousness, darkness and solitude” following the 2016 birth of her first daughter. But it was also recorded over three weeks during a residency at FUGA in Zaragoza, Spain in December 2016 and reflects these classical surroundings with a romantic array of muted chamber instruments and textures — including clarinets, guitars, saxophones, tubas, cellos, and subtle hand percussion.
The intimate-cum-international results of Paul’s internal and external journeys will be midwifed into the world on April 5 via the UK-based Slip label. Keep your eyes peeled for ordering info and check out the art and tracklisting as you listen to the shadowy sample track “Night Howl” below.
Lost In Shadows tracklisting:
01. Blanquita
02. Reflection
03. Bounce Bounce
04. Night Howl
05. The Between
06. Breathless Air
07. Frayed Dreams
08. What Happens
09. Two Ships
10. Delirium
11. Broken Limbs
More about: Ashley Paul
